THE ISLAND OF RUMOURS

SÃO TOMÉ AND PRÍNCIPE, APRIL 2015

São Tomé and Príncipe is the island of rumours.

The rumours fly from the small shacks that serve cheap beer along Rua 3 Fevereiro, they are catapulted through the enthusiastic clamour of messengers and offers at the marketplace, they multiply and spread outside the always muddy station for the New York-yellow taxis and continue on into the comfortably air-conditioned Café Central with its sweet baked goods and dark, bitter coffee. Once in a while the rumours penetrate the porous walls of the courthouse and legislative assembly and perhaps the presidential palace. The rumours are tales of corruption and fraud, of ordinary family dramas, incredible fishing expeditions, terrible fishing expeditions, business opportunities and run of the mill meanness and idle gossip.

The rumour about Wilson Morais is that he is a robber and a murderer who killed one of the money changers at the bus station and that he later drove around the streets of São Tomé with the corpse seated in the passenger seat. He did this, also according to the rumours, up until the excursion came to an end with a long-term stay in the city’s only jail.

What can be confirmed about Wilson Morais with certainty is that together with his father he runs the bustling and apparently successful shipping agency Ecuador, and that he is a street smart, at times very jovial, but also secretive man with good contacts and knowledge of most of what is going on in São Tomé.

In mid-March, Morais received a phone call from Spain. A fishing vessel was on its way to São Tomé and they needed assistance. Ecuador had formerly taken on assignments from Spanish fisheries companies without asking too many questions and he accepted the commission. A few days later an email arrived containing details about the ship’s owner, the company Royal Marine & Spares, explaining that the trawler the Thunder would be arriving at the island state for maintenance and a crew rotation. Morais was sent the necessary ship’s documents and crew lists to clear the ship’s arrival and acquire visas, hotel rooms and airline tickets for the crew.1

It was a wholly ordinary commission for a ship agent. It was more out of the ordinary that the ship owner also wanted to flag the ship in São Tomé.

Only a dozen ships have their home port on the island state’s black-listed ship’s register. Morais contacted the coast guard to arrange the papers and formalities so the Thunder could be assigned a new home port.

While Morais waited for the client to sail into São Tomé harbour, he received a phone call from the harbour master, who told him that as unbelievable as it might seem, the ship was about to sink. Wilson Morais immediately jumped into action and called up another ship in the area to organize a rescue operation but soon learned that a vessel was already in place and the situation under control.

The rest of the day he prepared for the crew’s arrival and had time for merely a few restless hours of sleep before he had to drive down to the harbour and jump on board the coast guard vessel that would bring the shipwrecked seamen to land.

In the darkness, a short distance away from the perfect, half-moon shaped Ana Chaves Bay, which forms the approach to São Tomé, he could make out the silhouette of a ship with a camouflage pattern on the hull and a cartoonish wolf-jaw on the bow. The 55-metre-long Sam Simon made São Tomé’s modest coast guard vessel the Águia – the Eagle – look pitiful.

While the enlisted seamen stood by with one hand on the rail of the Águia and the other on their automatic weapons, Wilson Morais hopped on board the Sam Simon. He went straight to the Thunder’s captain and fishing captain and in a peaceful corner of the ship he told them that minivans would transport the shipwrecked crew to luxury hotels near the airport.

Fishing captain Lampon sat down and ducking his head, packed his few belongings. Chakravarty had asked the photographers of the Sam Simon to watch over Lampon with particular care. The latter was the only one of the Spanish officers who wore a wristwatch on his right arm, as had “the Balaclava Man”, the man who had thrown the chain length and steel pipe at the Sea Shepherd crew.

But Lampon had had enough of all the attention. He stood up, looked directly into a camera, reached out his arms and exclaimed loudly “puta mierda” – bloody cunt.

Then he climbed into the coast guard vessel without saying a word to the crew who had rescued him.

The ship owner’s representative in Spain had given Wilson Morais instructions to get the officers of the Thunder out of the country as quickly as possible. The tickets for Lisbon were already booked. The next evening at 7 PM, they would mingle with the tourists at São Tomé and Príncipe’s international airport and be lifted out of their lives’ worst nightmare.

If everything went according to plan.